Incitement: A Weapon of Militant Democracy and a Rhetorical Fight Word

Austria implemented several regulations that are similar to the German constitutional measures to defend the liberal democratic order generally known as militant democracy. The Prohibition Stature, for instance, enacted in June 1945 rendered all Nazi organisations illegal, and should protect Austrian democracy. Furthermore, Article 304 criminal code “incitement to hostilities” (Aufreizung zu Feindseligkeiten) allowed to persecute attempts to stir up hatred and prohibited activities that were likely to divide the Austrian population in hostile antagonistic groups and, hence, to threaten public order. This resembled the German “Volksverhetzung” (Incitement of the people). In 1974, Article 283 replaced this Article by the offence “incitement to hatred” (Verhetzung) which since 2011 protects a broad range of social groups. This article defines and regulates incitement to violence against a church or religious community, or any other group or a member of a group defined in terms of race, language, religion, nation, ethnicity, gender, disability, age, or sexual orientation. The offence of incitement also includes public hate speech: violation of human dignity of one of these groups. However, the word “Verhetzung” (incitement) is a common “fight word” in political dispute. The word refers to the stirring of any sort of hostility against an individual or a group. In Austrian parliamentary discourse “Verhetzung” is regularly applied to attack an adversary. The rhetorical strategy to accuse an adversary of incitement changed its meaning after the enactment of the criminal offence incitement. Since then the attack insinuated a criminal offence. In my paper, I will present some findings of my research in parliamentary rhetoric in the Austrian National Council from 1945 until 2015. When searching the stenographic protocols for the word “Verhetzung”, I expected to find its occurrence especially in sessions when the criminal offence was under consideration. Surprisingly, its frequent occurrence in plenary debates does not correlate with legal reforms on the Article. Commencing from this quantitative findings, I conducted detailed analysis of plenary debates, and found some evidence of a conceptual change.